Rome 4: The Art of War (33 page)

We rode as hard then as anyone has ever ridden in Rome’s streets, heading flat out towards the Capitoline. Nearing the slums, I leaned over to Lucius. ‘May I ask where we’re going?’

‘To a brothel. We were going anyway, but this just confirms— Oh, for fuck’s sake, man, don’t be such a prude! Wipe that scowl off your face and listen! Pantera’s been there seven times in the past two months but I’ve never had word in time to take him. Now there’s a chance, if we move fast enough. Bring those men and come
on
!’

Rome, November,
AD
69

I DIDN’T MUCH
like Pantera, and I certainly didn’t trust him, but he had courage, you have to give him that. He led Lucius a merry dance into the ghetto, using himself as bait, and given what Lucius had planned for him, I’m not sure I could have done that.

It happened the day the emperor rode back into the city. Pantera came to us in the middle of the morning, out of the blue, dressed as a slave-buyer with his three personal ‘slaves’ in tow. The story was that he had bought Borros and wanted to see if he could become a gladiator. You know what he’s like; everyone was right for their part.

Borros himself could easily have been a fighter. He was washed and oiled and had some bull’s-leather armour of a kind that went out of use in Rome when I was about three years old, but was probably still worn in the provinces. He had a great-sword that looked as if it might have genuinely been British, and a small round shield.

Julius fussed around
the big oaf like a bear round a cub, insisted he wrapped his blade in thick, soft leather and his fists likewise, that he wear greaves to protect his shins, that kind of rubbish. He had pitted him against the Drake, a little Thessalyan with blue-black hair who was wickedly fast with a trident and a net, a retiarius who had survived the tendency for all of his kind to die fast in the arena.

Years ago, Claudius passed a law that any retiarius who was beaten in his bout should be slaughtered on the spot and never given a second chance, but then Claudius, more than any other emperor, liked the sight of other men’s pain. Nero, who was easily the most squeamish of his family, revoked the ruling, but still, the retiarii had a noticeably short lifespan and the Drake was one of the few who had beaten the odds.

We had a good crowd for the audience: all one thousand of Lucius’ fighting men, sworn to the emperor; men who had seen the chance to escape from the arena and get into the legions. They couldn’t believe their luck, I tell you. Claudianus had had a dozen volunteers trying for every place. He’d had the luxury of weeding out the weak, the soft, the unintelligent, or the too-intelligent, and by the time he’d finished he had a thousand near-fanatics who would follow his commands to the letter.

They had all gathered to watch the bout between Borros and the Drake, which was fine, until a runner came panting from the palace and it turned out that the new ‘cohort’ was required to put on a parade for Lucius.

Pantera made his excuses and left, but not before he’d had a quiet word with Claudianus. He couldn’t afford to be seen, of course; Geminus was one of the few men in the tight little clique around Lucius who could actually identify him, but I watched him leave and he didn’t go far, just ducked into the ironsmith’s down the road where they made the weapons for the arena. I doubt very much if he’d gone in to order a sword.

I was called inside
to make a midday meal for Lucius, but he didn’t eat it. I didn’t see what made him leave, but he was gone as if a thousand harpies were on his tail, dragging an unhappy Geminus along for the ride: I hadn’t let Geminus see me, you needn’t think that. I’m not stupid.

What exactly happened to Pantera? I’ve no idea. You’d have to ask one of the others.

I do know that when Julius’ cohort of gladiators marched out a few days later, I marched with them. Nobody asked me, but nobody told me not to. Jocasta hadn’t been to see me in half a month and I was sick of wondering what she was doing. I thought it would be easier to live without her if I was away from Rome.

Of course it wasn’t, but a man can dream, can’t he?

Rome, November,
AD
69

PANTERA ARRIVED BREATHLESS
at the House of the Lyre, and was ushered swiftly to the room on the top floor by Marcus-on-the-door. Mounting the stairs, Pantera took time to ask, ‘Has Domitian been again?’

‘Three times. Always to the same woman. He pays one gold coin to her and another to whoever is on the door. He watches her. He touches her. He has not yet taken her.’ For this information: silver.

They arrived outside my door. A brazier warmed the landing against November’s chill.

Marcus melted away. Cerberus greeted Pantera with a slow-thumping tail; the spy had come eight times in all, and the last seven, he had brought meat for the dog. Now he had only a handful of dates, but the hound slobbered them out of his hand and lay with a lazy grin on his great-jowled face.

I was not as easily charmed. It wasn’t a good time for Pantera to visit. My eyes were patched by last night’s kohl, my silk tunic creased. There
had been no time to change. I opened the door fast, flustered, and let him think that the change in the weather had left me thus; I never did like winters.

‘What are you doing here? I thought we had protocols. Arrangements. You’re meant to send word before you come.’

Pantera still hadn’t caught his breath. He spoke between gasps that came from more than just climbing the stairs. ‘I couldn’t. There wasn’t time. Lucius is too close and the negotiations with the marines at Misene in the south are too delicate; I need to be there. I’ll be away from Rome for some time and you need to know enough to keep going. May I come in?’

He didn’t wait, but pushed past me into the room. Cerberus, well bribed, let him do it.

Inside, I paced the length of the bead curtain, brushing it with my shoulder, drawing out soft discordant music. There was a new vase on a stand by the far wall; tall as one of the silver-boys, and as wide. All around its belly were depictions of men in various acts of sex. It looked Greek. And very old. And very, very expensive. It was; I should have hidden it.

‘You can’t stay.’ I stopped beneath the frieze of Dionysus on the near wall. In my nervous state, my fingers picked at the plaster. I wound them together to make them stop.

Pantera smiled. ‘I don’t need to stay. I need to send a message to Vespasian, telling him that the fleet at Misene will be his by December, but that I have urgent need of more gold to secure it. You have two birds left?’

‘One.’

‘I thought—’

‘You are not the only one sending messages to Vespasian. How do you think Caecina was able to ensure that his defection would be accepted?’

‘Then have you the coding sheets and we can send—’

Sharply: ‘No.’

Our eyes met.
With evident care, Pantera said, ‘If you need me to stop coming …’

‘If I need anything from you, I’ll tell you. And just now, I need you to get out of— Oh,
fuck
!’

Down at the door, where the giant Belgian controlled the entrance, the silver bell rang, twice.

My nerves! I spun on the spot. ‘You have to go. No, there isn’t time. You have to hide. Out on to the balcony.
Now!
’

I grabbed Pantera’s shoulders and shoved him through a shatter of pearls, past the vast, satined bed, and on to the balcony. Grey November cloud draped spider-like about the city, muting all the colours. The balcony garden was still beautiful, though. No flowers bloomed now, but many-shaded leaves gave it colour.

The opposite balcony was a good fifteen feet away and the iron railing was much the same as ours, not a safe place to leave from, or to land on. I watched Pantera judge the distance.

‘You want me to jump?’

‘If I thought you wouldn’t die, I’d say yes. But you would, and he’d hear you.’

‘Who, Horus?
Who is coming?
’

I couldn’t meet his eye, and just from that, it was obvious: Lucius was coming, and not for the first time.

Pantera looked stricken. I hadn’t told him. Marcus hadn’t told him. The Belgian on the door hadn’t told him. All his careful arrangements had fallen apart. I could have wept.

Dully, he said, ‘How long?’ but we were beyond that. My hands were on his shoulders, my fingers digging tight.

Urgently: ‘If he catches you here, we’re both dead. There isn’t time to get you out, you have to hide. Get over the balcony.’

He knew me well enough to act without asking. I talked as he clambered gingerly over the iron railings. ‘Go down – there, on the
left, underneath. Can you see the ledge? It’s like a second floor, hidden under the first. There’s room for a man to lie in there. You’ll be safe. Nobody can see you from above or below.’

I had tried this out; I knew it was true. The climb was terrifying with four storeys offering certain death on the pavings below if you lost your grip and fell, but if you used the wall to hold your feet, and eased your hands down the iron rails, you could find a second platform below the first, with just enough space between for a man to slide in, feet first. The result, of course, was that the same man, if discovered, was trapped.

‘Pantera?’ I knelt on the balcony, head thrust between the uprights. ‘If you speak, if you call out, if you fart, you will be heard and found, and if you are found, we will both face Lucius’ inquisitors. I say this not as a threat, but as the truth. Believe me, he is not one to cross.’

‘I know.’

‘So you need to stay silent.’

‘I know.’

‘But will you?’

He gave an exasperated sigh, quite a feat given the evident fear on his face. ‘Yes, Horus, I will. Go now, let them in. I will stay silent here all day and all night if need be. Just go! And thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet.’ With one last nervous nod, I went back to open the door to my room.

I had no time to change, to wash. I dragged a comb through my hair, and checked myself in the mirror. My eyes were rimmed in black and it had smeared; I must have shed a tear without knowing it. I picked a scrap of linen from a pouch in my sleeve and scrubbed it away before I opened the door.

Two men stood on the threshold: Lucius, whom I had been expecting, but
also another man, with a broader, more open face, and kinder eyes, whom I know now to be Geminus, but then did not know at all.

I bowed, anyway. ‘Gentlemen, come in. Lord Lucius, be welcome. Let me move Cerberus first. He does know you mean me no harm, but …’

My voice was a hoarse rasp. I thought of saying I had a throat fever, but Lucius could smell falsehood the way Cerberus could smell meat.

I unhooked the hound’s collar and led him in to chain him at his kennel, but Lucius, brave, or foolhardy, did not wait; he was already in the room, sweeping back the beaded curtain and straight through to the balcony. I had been right; if Pantera had tried to escape …

‘We nearly had him. He was seen coming in here. Where is he?’

Lucius: brusque, brisk, abrupt, was running to the end of his temper. I did not know him before his rush to power, but what I saw in him then was a man overhorsed by the glory fate had handed him, riding by sheer force of will, knowing he must be thrown sometime, and that it would hurt.

In my experience, men who find themselves in receipt of unasked-for luck become either benign, believing themselves unworthy, or dangerous, believing everyone else sees them as unfit. Vitellius, by all accounts, leaned towards the former. Lucius, quite evidently, was the latter.

I said, ‘My lord, Pantera has gone. He heard you downstairs and he fled.’

‘Fled? How? Where to? We have men at front and back.’

‘Down two flights of stairs and out on to the rooftops of the Street of the Tanners. He never comes into any house without at least two exits.’

‘And you never thought to tell us about that?’

‘Lord, you never asked. You said you would never come while he was here.
I thought you wanted to know what he knew, not to catch him.’

‘Nevertheless …’ There was a pause, some pacing. ‘No matter. He was here. What did he want?’

‘To send a dove to Vespasian. He – that is Pantera – is going south to the marines at Misene. The message was to tell the gen— the usurper that the base will be his by the end of December as long as he sends gold enough to cover the next month. The dove didn’t go. We had not the time to send it.’

‘South?’ He stared at me as if I had spoken Mauretanian, or impugned the chastity of his mother. ‘
South?
’

‘So he said, lord.’

‘South. South.
South!
’ He was pacing, speaking the word on every step. His face split in a wide grin. ‘And he tried to send me north. But I have him now … When will he leave?’

‘Soon. He seemed in a hurry. He may be going there now.’

‘When will he next come back here?’

I thought, not ever; he will never come here again, but I said, ‘I have no idea. He said I would need to know enough to manage in his absence, but he left before he could say more.’ I let the silent reproach on my face show:
see, lord, how much more useful I would have been had you not barged in here?

Lucius ignored me. He was pacing, thinking, frantic. ‘Could you summon him?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Certainly! You told us of the ways you have of reaching him if you need to: a message left with the date-seller; a mark made on the base of a fountain; a stone weighting down cloths of a particular colour in the Tiber. We have men watching them, and yet he has not been to check them in three months. Why?’

‘Perhaps because you have men watching them?’

‘
Fool!
’

He struck me! Granted it was open-handed, and not a fist, but he
hit me, hard, across the left cheek. I had been too waspish. And Lucius, too impatient, had hit me.

He really, really shouldn’t have done that.